State Sen. Stewart J. Greenleaf (R., Montgomery) said yesterday that he would introduce a bill paving the way for state funding of a proposed SEPTA rail line that would link economic centers and residential communities in three suburban counties. Greenleaf said his bill would place the proposed rail line - commonly known as the Cross County Metro - on the Capital Budget Authorization Bill, making it eligible for funding. He said he would introduce the legislation today or tomorrow.

SEPTA abruptly canceled its quarter-billion-dollar purchase of new Regional Rail cars yesterday in order to end a lawsuit that accused the transit agency of rigging the bid to favor a South Korean firm. In a written statement released yesterday, SEPTA board chairman Pasquale "Pat" Deon said the potential legal costs prompted him to end the suit and put the contract out to bid again. SEPTA expects quickly to invite new bids for the contract to build 104 new cars for the Regional Rail system, the statement said.

A national strike by Amtrak employees, threatened for as early as Wednesday, could disrupt the daily commute for nearly 25,000 riders on SEPTA's regional rail system. Six of SEPTA's 13 regional rail lines, representing the bulk of passengers on the commuter rail system, run on Amtrak tracks, and depend on Amtrak to provide power, signaling and switching. The other seven regional rail lines would continue operating in case of an Amtrak strike but could be overwhelmed by thousands of additional riders.

When a strike shut down SEPTA buses, trolleys and subways last week, commuters walked, carpooled and relied on the regional rail system to get around. When the trains stopped running yesterday, transit riders rose to the challenge again. Picketing transit workers shut down service on seven of SEPTA's 17 regional rail lines. SEPTA canceled most service on the R1 Airport line, R2 Wilmington, and the R7 and R8 lines into Chestnut Hill and Fox Chase, the R6 Cynwyd Line and the R7 Trenton.

Less than a year after a weeklong strike stilled buses, subways and trolleys, SEPTA once again faces the threat of a shutdown - this time, regional commuter trains. The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET), whose 195 local members run SEPTA regional-rail trains, have worked without a contract for almost a year. Union leaders and SEPTA are at odds over wages. In November, the transit authority gave its largest union - Transport Workers Union Local 234 - a four-year deal with annual 3 percent raises.

Ask Ed Wilkes about the future of transportation in the suburbs and he'll tell you to look at Route 202 during rush hour. The outlook isn't pretty, he said, particularly if SEPTA eliminates its weekend service and some off-peak weekday service on its regional rail lines, as it has proposed. "People will get back in their cars," said Wilkes, chairman of the Upper Merion Board of Supervisors and a SEPTA commuter for 17 years. And he wasn't buoyed by what he heard at the authority's hearing at the Valley Forge Hilton in King of Prussia on Tuesday night, the second in a series of five meetings the authority held on its proposed cuts to the regional rail lines.

SEPTA is paying $500,000 a year for information technology services to CapTech Consulting Inc., the company hired to design and build an e-commerce site on the agency's home page to sell special transit passes for the September papal visit. The site crashed within minutes of going live Monday morningand has remained down all week, as SEPTA considers hiring another outside vendor to sell the online passes if CapTech cannot solve the problems. The Wayne office of CapTech, a Richmond, Va.-based company, was awarded a three-year$1.5 million contract in March to perform information technology tasks for SEPTA.

FIRST, there's a thump. Then - lightning fast - a crunch. The inhuman sound erupted moments after Richard Dixon jerked the emergency brake on the train he was operating. Right away, he knew what it was - the sound of a body being crushed beneath his train. It was a 17-year-old boy. "It's really hard to describe," the engineer said, recalling the suicide that unfolded a decade ago as his Regional Rail train barreled north from Jenkintown toward Warminster. "You just know it - and you don't forget it. " For 15 people, trains speeding along the city's railroads have been a gruesome, but easily accessible, means of killing themselves over the past five years.

SEPTA plans to spend up to $154 million for 18 new Regional Rail locomotives, the authority's biggest railroad acquisition in a decade. The electric locomotives would replace eight aging engines operating on the Lansdale-Doylestown, Paoli-Thorndale, Trenton, and Wilmington-Newark lines, and add capacity to other regional lines. The SEPTA board is expected to approve the purchase on Thursday, with the locomotives to be delivered in 2018. SEPTA is buying 13 "Cities Sprinter" ACS-64 locomotives to be built by Siemens Industry Inc., the German conglomerate, at its factory in Sacramento, Calif.

SEPTA IS PLANNING to sell special one-day passes at $10 for Regional Rail travel during the papal visit in September. According to a press release by SEPTA, this is being done to "keep crowd control numbers consistent with the capacity that will be available on trains. " I commend SEPTA for their proactive approach that will have an effect on the safety of Philadelphia citizens as well the tourists planning to attend this historical event. However, in the process SEPTA has not taken into consideration those who keep SEPTA in operation: daily riders.